The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

at Ben, who sat stiff-backed in his chair looking straight ahead. On entering the office Kierk sat and Karen had adjusted her papers, looking dour and serious and hassled. Before Kierk could speak she began.

“I don’t like adjudicating disputes, Kierk. I’m very busy, I have a lot on my plate, there’s this stupid anonymous review . . .”

“We didn’t—

” “Well, Ben, who has worked for me for over a year now, told me that you told him that he, and I quote, ‘ didn’t exist.’ ”

“Not what I said.”

“You said something similar.”

“I said that the field didn’t exist and therefore he is wasting his time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s complicated. But I did not say that he didn’t exist.”

“Did you also tell him that you would, and I quote, ‘break every bone in his hand’?”

“Listen, he grabbed me. I wasn’t expecting it. It was the heat of the moment. I accept responsibility for—”

“You damn better. What makes you think that you can just yell at a research assistant?”

“Look, the guy, I mean, Ben . . . was just mad because I didn’t know his name. He came in looking for a fight because I won’t go to lunch with him.”

“It doesn’t matter, Kierk. It doesn’t. I’ve heard . . . reports from other people, and there’s been some talk among the other Crick Scholars and the professors, that you’ve been . . . disruptive. That you’ve instigated some situations and yelled at people. That you talk down to them and ignore them.”

“That’s exaggerated.”

“But it’s been mentioned to me multiple times, Kierk! And honestly coming from that many sources there is clearly a problem. So I don’t know what to do with you. I really don’t. I mean, you tell me. Tell me what you think the appropriate response is.”

“Free meals at the Prytaneum?”

“What the hell is that?”

“What Socrates suggested his sentence should be for corrupting the youth.”

“I don’t care about Socrates right now, Kierk. I don’t. I need to know whether or not you can function in a healthy, open, work environment.”

“I take full responsibility, Karen. There won’t be any more problems.”

“Just focus on your own research. Ignore what everyone else is doing. You’re a smart young man, just stay out of trouble. Keep your head down. Okay?”

“I can do that. Thank you for your patience. Truly.”

“Okay, Kierk. Okay.”

So Kierk had ended up in this bar, scribbling away, trying to make some kind of progress he could report. He wondered if Karen somehow knew, unconsciously, in some animal way, that he had written the blog post dismissing all those theories.

Around him in the bar gather young professionals his age, and he’s uncomfortable until remembering he’s one of them now; that he fits in with his dress shirt and haircut and discerning look and that his form had filled out and he now looks closer to athletic than starving. He orders another glass of wine and dips at the spots on his table with a napkin.

Then the lights begin to flicker and surge. There are gasps and oohs and aahs. The singer stops. Everyone is craning their necks up. The lights go out.

For a brief second the world is only language. Remarks and cries and laughter, the sound of women grabbing and shrieking for their partner, and then a single bright emergency light blinks on near the door. The manager stands on the little stage and announces that it’s just a power outage and that there’s been public announcements that this could happen sometime soon, and there is nothing to worry about. And with that the room breaks into whooping, and calls for more drinks and food, and celebration.

The performer, after a look of wonder, begins to play again, now without a microphone, and the whole room has been set by the single bright emergency light to a deep chiaroscuro, the bar suddenly overcrowded with both shadows and people clapping, standing up, hugging one another, draining their drinks. Under the emergency light the back wall has become another bar populated by their outlines. People become more open and vulnerable. A young woman who is also sitting alone glances over at Kierk, smiling. Patrons are standing, leaving the bar, they want to see what’s going on in the streets, and Kierk, after smiling back an apologetic goodbye at the girl looking his way, sets some cash down and grabs his notebook and follows the wanderers outside. They spill out the entrance onto the street, entering the unlit obelisks of buildings and primitive airs of a Manhattan without power. Block upon block are in blackness, and although Kierk can see, peering uptown, the great lit beacon of midtown, everything else is dark except for the bright sweeps of cars, one of which bears down on the crowd and illuminates all of their smiling faces briefly in passing, and Kierk, wheeling on the sidewalk, separates himself from the others and begins to wander into this astrolabe for giants, this Stonehenge.

Kierk walks the streets in this new darkness that is occasionally scattered momentarily by headlights, as well as by the occasional hanging bulbs of light coming from backup generators. With its nemesis air-conditioning fully vanquished the heat seems to be relinquishing its hold on the city, broken by a natural breeze. The lack of light seems a balm. And it is under that calming blanket of absence that everyone comes out to this new city. An entire subnivean world is being carved out of the darkness; passageways are opened up and labyrinthine flows of pedestrians construct tunnels and junctions. It is a new world intense with childlike emotions. There is trepidation at each intersection as people pick their way across voids of total darkness, and voices become hushed, aware of those around them, yet now forced to address them directly, to focus their attention on those they are passing, to nod, to speak, to reach out to. Around Kierk the streets become small dramas: merchants give away their merchandise for free, strangers embrace, men and women